Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence: Inclusive Mentoring in STEM

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce through efforts to significantly increase the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations (African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders) to successfully complete high quality STEM degree programs.

The Louis Stokes Inclusive Mentoring in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (Louis Stokes IM STEM) Center of Excellence will bring together experts dedicated to investigating successful and promising practices for inclusive STEM mentoring along several STEM pathways and in various learning environments. The Center will collaborate with academic institutions, Department of Energy (DoE) national laboratories, professional societies, and regional industrial partners in researching and augmenting inclusive mentoring activities for historically underrepresented minority (URM) students and students from other underserved populations.

As the student population enrolled in higher education institutions continues to diversify, a deep understanding and widespread adoption of inclusive mentoring practices that promote student success is needed. The IM STEM Center, with leadership from the lead institutions of two NSF-funded LSAMP projects - University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) and Colorado State University (CSU), will serve the Southwest Rockies region by conducting knowledge-building and diffusion activities on STEM mentoring.

Collaborating non-academic organizations include the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and professional STEM organizations including the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. The three focal areas to be addressed in project activities are mentoring of community college students in transition, mentoring of undergraduate and graduate student researchers, and mentoring of experiential learning students.

An advisory board consisting of Presidential Awardees of Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PASEMEM) and STEM mentoring researchers, in addition to linkages to the existing Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center of Excellence, provides a broad national range for the Center's research and dissemination activities.

The Center will disseminate inclusive mentoring knowledge via workshops, journal articles, an edited monograph, institutional websites, and other varied formats useful to diverse audiences and educational institutions. The workshops will train both mentors and trainers interested in offering their own inclusive mentoring workshops. The Center has the potential to expand, elevate and influence conversations about effective mentoring among communities of STEM faculty, graduate students, and government and industry professionals committed to developing a strong, diversified STEM workforce.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.